Posted
by
samzenpus
on Thursday July 12, 2012 @12:28AM
from the power-up dept.

garymortimer writes "Lockheed Martin (LMT) and LaserMotive, Inc., recently demonstrated the capabilities of an innovative laser power system to extend the Stalker Unmanned Aerial System (UAS) flight time to more than 48 hours. This increase in flight duration represents an improvement of 2,400 percent. Stalker is a small, silent UAS used by Special Operations Forces since 2006 to perform intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance missions."

No on felt the need to mention what the "laser power system" is, but what I gather it's just concentrating the power into a beam to wirelessly charge the UAV without landing. I don't know what the strength/distance of the beam is though.

Yeah I would be interested to know about scalability. Could this be a future solution to commercial airliners? Save a shit-ton of weight by just having enough battery power to get a plane to the nearest airport but then charge in-flight through recharge corridors.

Probably not economically feasible but could be cheaper to build a laser station every 10km than to build transcontinental highspeed rail.

From the article, "At the conclusion of the flight test, held in a wind tunnel,"

So they've pointed a laser at a photocell indoors, this is so far from doing it over hostile territory as to be laughable.

This is what research looks like. You don't start out testing a ready-to-deploy espionage platform. You take an idea, enhance it a bit, test it to see if your change works, enhance it more, see if your changes improved it, etc. Nobody's laughing at this stage, but I bet they were cheering.

Leaking the test results is also what 'marketing to investors' looks like. "Hey, Vulture Capitalists Inc., we've got a shiny laser powered spy drone for you to invest in, and we have proof of some ongoing tests... the military is interested... you'll get rich... give us $20 million... please?"

Leaking the test results is also what 'marketing to investors' looks like. "Hey, Vulture Capitalists Inc., we've got a shiny laser powered spy drone for you to invest in, and we have proof of some ongoing tests... the military is interested... you'll get rich... give us $20 million... please?"

And when they accidentally blind a seagul is when this thing gets shutdown for years on end by environmentalists.

Here are some issues that are greatly simplified by testing indoors in a wind tunnel;1. Tracking; The aircraft does not move therefore tracking is trivial.2. Range; Sure it may work at a few feet but does it work at a few kilometers?3. Atmospheric conditions; Atmospheric conditions can be completely controlled indoors. Does it work in heat haze, rain, snow, dust, etc. at range?

At least do a test that remotely approximates a real world situation. Everyone knows that power can be transmitted by laser which is

Did you RTFA? It said nothing about the test conditions inside the wind tunnel, only that “This test is one of the final steps...The next step in proving the reality of this technology is to demonstrate it outdoors in an extended flight of the Stalker.”

They could have used a low powered laser to simulate range. They could have introduced dust, smoke and fog into the tunnel to simulate weather. And they don't need to prove the tracking platform works if they already have a tracking platform that works, and such tracking platforms were demonstrated last year on test aircraft at distances of 20km or more. And none of that info made the blurb, which as I said looked designed to stimulate investment.

And they don't need to prove the tracking platform works if they already have a tracking platform that works, and such tracking platforms were demonstrated last year on test aircraft at distances of 20km or more.

In a documentary about early radar guided missile tests, circa 1950s and 1960s, one of the engineers talked about how they needed film footage of the hits (or misses) to evaluate how well the system was working. How do you aim a camera at the point where two nearly-supersonic objects are going to

This is what research looks like. You don't start out testing a ready-to-deploy espionage platform. You take an idea, enhance it a bit, test it to see if your change works, enhance it more, see if your changes improved it, etc. Nobody's laughing at this stage, but I bet they were cheering

Nuh-uh! I've seen James Bond. I'm sure Q will walk in any moment now with a perfect, bug-free device that will provide the perfect plot element at just the right time.

Leaking the test results is also what 'marketing to investors' looks like. "Hey, Vulture Capitalists Inc., we've got a shiny laser powered spy drone for you to invest in, and we have proof of some ongoing tests... the military is interested... you'll get rich... give us $20 million... please?"

$20M is not much money at all. Instead, most likely, this data was published (I really really doubt it was "leaked" in any way, shape, or form) in preparation for a contract proposal worth hundreds of millions, if not over a billion, dollars.

Ground station? Who cares, you're really pointing a bright (at some wavelength) laser beam at the aircraft. Pointing out where it is. I'm guessing this will only be used intermittently to charge batteries.

The ground station will probably be well protected, the US tends to operate with air superiority these days.

Perhaps it would have only gone 36 hours without the laser, but they were able to extend operational life by 33%. That's not chump change. Maybe what's limiting the use right now is cooling for the laser system?

the ground station should have an anti-missile defense system-- someone could drop an IR homing missile into their beam and ruin their whole day.

A small array of IR photodiodes and a comparator sending yaw & pitch feedback to a mini RC-aircraft-type controller/servo system to control tail-vanes on a home-built rocket or even to help guide a programmable autonomous Raspberry-PI-controlled quadrotor might be places to start for an improvised system.

I'm not aware of any currently-operational or even testing-stage military anti-quadrotor weapons systems. Especially one that could successfully engage multiple simultaneous flying targets capable of he

Ground station? Who cares, you're really pointing a bright (at some wavelength) laser beam at the aircraft. Pointing out where it is. I'm guessing this will only be used intermittently to charge batteries.

That's a really foolish thing to say. Take out the ground station and you remove the aircraft's reason to exist, and besides, air to surface is a lot easier than surface to air, you can just drop shit.

It doesn't necessarily have to come from the ground; or from a static source, or be continuous. Other options are:1) space based laser2) larger plane nearby3) multiple dynamic ground stations4) shorter bursts that "charge" batteries so no continuous beam required.

I'm no pro (though I've been shooting a long time), and I can reliably put 25 x.22lr rounds on a quarter at 100 yards, prone, sling (no rest), using only the aperture sights on my anschutz. With a.308, good glass, a couple sighting rounds and good conditions, a pro could almost certainly land a good percentage of rounds fired on a dime. I wouldn't bet what I have in my wallet that I could do it, though.

But I think the original point was, with a computer controlling a recoilless device that isn't affecte

earth is curved, lasers are straight, how many seconds can you actually do this in the field before you loose the tiny target... not counting in wind, drift, clouds, rain, or some dipshit playing with his watch?

Stabilized aiming platforms better not be a challenge for the military. Hell, there are kids making segway-clones and auto-aim-paintgun-bots out of web cams, Arduinos, and old inkjet printer stepper motors. You think a funded organization with a military product can't simply place an order with www.mobileweaponsplatforms-R-us.com and have one delivered tomorrow?

It does not matter how stable the aiming platform is it it can not track the target that is unstable as it reacts to winds. The other issue is that lasers are dispersed by airborne particles (dust), rain, head haze, range, etc. Will enough energy be transmitted over kilometers to keep the UAV in the air? What about trees, buildings and hills? Will they obstruct the beam. How heavy is the sending laser? The Stalker is designed to be deployable by a single Special Forced soldier. Can one deploy the laser rech

presumably, without researching, they would use some small mirrors that can be varied in position in extreme speeds to stabilize the ray on the drone - but still, that's the part that I'd have asked them to prove that works.. not a stupid wind tunnel test.

of course it's useless if it needs _constant_ recharge. but it could just return to the charging area every now and then.

In the last year there was a test of a real world tracking system aimed at an aircraft. I don't remember the date, but it was published on a NOTAM keeping pilots 100km away from a test area because they were shining a laser on a target aircraft. It certainly could be related to this test.

I suspect the laser will be vehicle mounted, as it will need a lot more power than a soldier can carry. There's no technical reasons to limit one vehicle to carry only one laser, and also no reason one laser couldn't mainta

I never said it could not be done. I just said that doing it in an uncontrolled environment is very different from doing it in a controlled environment. I would have the same opinion is Big Dog. had been tested indoors on a rubber floor and the touted as being in its " final steps" of testing for real life deployment.

By the way, the tracking system you saw last year was for a much larger UAV. This is a man portable UAV,is much harder to track at distances and the area of the power receiver is also much sma

It probably won't be satellite based, because the problem with satellites is delivering enough energy up to space (there are no gas stations up there.) It will probably be vehicle based, where you just drive a truck to the highest peak on the battlefield.

The straightness of the line might matter a little bit for coarse initial acquisition of the drone, but not in continual precision mode. Not being mathematically "straight" doesn't matter because the system almost certainly employs feedback from the targe

> Since it's a laser to deliver power, why can't it be mounted on a satellite?

1) We're not talking relatively low-power TV broadcast satellites where the receiving antenna gets a few microvolts, maybe millivolts from the satellite. Lasers capable of recharging a drone in flight require a lot of power, and it's bleeping expensive to continuously refuel/resupply a satelite even in low earth orbit. Just look at the costs of ISS (International Space Station).

You can power them from satellites rather than ground based - you'll escape all the dust and much of the atmospheric crap, and your power will be free from the sun. Park a satellite over the Middle East and you have LOS everywhere.

Power attenuation (due to atmospheric interference and beam divergence) would probably be the limiting factor. These drones are probably flying between 1-4 miles from the ground. Compare to 22k miles for a geosynch satellite "parked over the Middle East" or ~200 miles for a LEO satellite in a constellation of satellites. Attenuation increases as the function of the square of the distance, so even an increase in a factor of 50 for a LEO sat would probably be a deal breaker.

I tried to design a system like that once, but during the development I had a dream where I was dressed in a Sun God robe surrounded by naked women chanting and throwing pickles at me. That brought and end to it all.

I tried to design a system like that once, but during the development I had a dream where I was dressed in a Sun God robe surrounded by naked women chanting and throwing pickles at me. That brought and end to it all.

Are you kidding? That kind of dream would only motivate me to finish sooner.

You can power them from satellites rather than ground based - you'll escape all the dust and much of the atmospheric crap, and your power will be free from the sun.

Satellite power isn't free... In fact it's EXTREMELY expensive. Satellite EoL is most commonly when solar panels have deteriorated enough that they can't provide the trickle of power most sats need.

Yes, you escape dust problems, but then you pick up the problem of hugely-increased distances from laser to drone.

And the biggest problem is targeting... Drones are small, subject to atmosphere turbulence and ground control, both of which can cause sudden location changes, and the satellite is going to need to handle this, in real-time, or else a massive laser beam suddenly shines down at the feet of the people who aren't supposed to know they're being spied on.

You can power them from satellites rather than ground based - you'll escape all the dust and much of the atmospheric crap, and your power will be free from the sun. Park a satellite over the Middle East and you have LOS everywhere.

And if you miss the little flying drone and happen to fry some people on the ground...oh well, shit happens...

Lasees really suck up the electric. You'ld need ground staions hooked into a power grid spread out near the intended fly route. This idea has potential for powering passenger planes, jet fuel isn't getting any cheaper.

And now make the huge leap to putting a manned vehicle on it, build a bunch more lasers, find a President who will spend money on space exploration, and head for Jupiter and points beyond. (Apologies for the optimism.)

While I can see applications for something like this, I don't see how espionage and special forces ops are among them.

The whole point of these kinds of operations is to not let anybody know they are happening. They even talk about this drone as being extra quiet and stealthy. So, if that is the case, does it really make sense to shine a big laser at it? Maybe you could start it out quiet and then only turn the laser on after the bullets start flying, which makes more sense for special forces than espiona

Well,for recharging the drone can leave the operation area. E.g. if it is a carrier based drone it moves 10km out of the surveilance area closer to the carrier and get recharged in flight. Saves the full round trip and the landing / launching.

no.. that's not really the point, it recharges a drone whilst it's in air.it's presumably to be used in situations where it doesn't matter that you give your position away.it's not for a guerilla mission, but for mop up, think about keeping an eye on protest campers and fighting against guerillas who already know where your base is.

it's not to be used in a situation where it's a certain sized and enabled group vs. another. but more like elephant(usa) against a squirrel. squirrel knows where the elephant is

"it's presumably to be used in situations where it doesn't matter that you give your position away."
And presumably against an enemy without a mirror.
Now if we can mount this in a satellite and beam down on it and use the sun as the energy source. Maybe Reagan's Star Wars [wikipedia.org] wasn't so off after all.

Oh good, so now they can not only shine a big, bright, detectable light on the drone but it can also be traced back to the charging station on the other end of the beam. What a brilliant military invention! Since this has no practical use whatsoever on foreign battlefields, I think they just wanted to build a giant, high powered laser with a good tracking system. Now that they could turn into something useful.